Replication For: Holding Agencies Accountable: Exploring the Effect of Oversight on Citizens’ Approval of Members of Congress

We seek to understand the incentives facing Congress members to hold executive agencies accountable. Specifically, we explore whether Congress members are rewarded for taking politically costly oversight actions. We evaluate the effect of oversight activities on citizens’ evaluations of Congress members, taking into account the member’s partisanship, the citizen’s partisanship, and agency ideology. Using a survey experiment, we find evidence that citizens’ evaluations of members are affected by the members’ oversight activity, with both copartisan and cross-party members rewarded for oversight efforts. The positive effect of oversight on approval is also greater for politically costly actions, though only for citizens’ evaluations of cross-partisans. These results provide insight into the way in which citizens interpret oversight activities by Congress members, suggesting that while good governance actions hold value for citizens, costly oversight actions aimed at political allies are not rewarded by copartisan citizens more than politically expedient oversight actions.